Category: News

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Several years ago, I wrote about the Prime minister of the UK fighting against this ‘green C**P’ now they want us to look at them as the saviours of the energy crisis?

Back in 2013 David Cameron did a u-turn on government support for Wind and Solar power generation. This has greatly impacted the uptake of both – and the savings are small and will be dwarfed by the likely financial cost of the delay that they forced on us.

Gas prices have already risen by 50% and are likely to spike further later this year. The chancellor has made small moves to try to stop this (and has recently given up by promising us all money off our bill).

What is scary, is that had the Conservative government of 2013 not done what they did, we would already be generating more clean energy than that which gets imported from Russia.

Labour has pledged a 28 billion fund to lead a green recovery, his homes grant scheme has insulated just 10% of the pathetically small number of homes it had promised to insulate.

The Renewable Energy Association believe that it could build enough energy generation within 18 months to offset the loss of the terrawatt-hour imported from Russia – if obstacles were removed. Renewables are faster to come on line and cheaper than either Shale or north sea drilling.

Bizarrely, the Mail suggests that those fighting fracking are funded by Putin – a clearly stupid idea, as Putin wants fracking stopped so that he can supply the UK instead. Of course these extreme views have never felt the need to conform to something as unimportant as the truth. I would hope, however, that the absurdity of these positions would be so obvious as to make a mockery of them, and give the far right of the conservative party the backbone to do what is needed and ignore the contradictory voices coming from even further right.

We need to move away from gas. For goodness sakes, it is not a renewable resource, so one day the planet will have to survive without it. Lets make that day now, and not require our descendants to learn to survive in a world decidedly less pleasant to those wanting to live here.

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In an effort to deal with encroachment into national parks Indonesia is trying a new policy

Many of the Indonesian forest reserves, have become paper parks, with much or most of the forestation and other vegetation lost. They clear land in the hope that they will eventually be given the title to the land to make their seizures legal.

Under their new program “conservation partnership”, the settlers acknowledge that they cannot claim the land, and they have to help restore the land to how it was before they damaged it. The are then allowed to remain on the land and cultivate traditional crops and harvest non timber products like rattan and honey – but importantly, not palm oil.

This model has grown, and now 177,000 hectares is under this form of management (about 700 square miles.

It continues to be a hard balance between the protection of the forest, and allowing the people who live in these areas (both native, and those who move from elsewhere), to be able to better their lives through work. If work exists that both benefits them and the ecosystem then this is likely to succeed.

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Tory MPs are arguing that the green transition is too expensive, an argument that has proved false many times over – currently being shown to be rubbish by the EU

It is a progressions that is very old

  1. Deny that there is a problem – in this case deny the increasingly clear evidence of climate change
  2. Claim that mitigation of the problem (which until recently they denied existed) is way to expensive – why would a sane person listen to some one who has been denying the problem for years
  3. Once the damage is done, say that it is too late anyway

Temperatures at some Arctic weather stations hit 30 degrees earlier this year. At the same time, down in Antarctica temperatures hit 40 degrees above normal. These readings are not anomolies. We have also seen mass coral bleachings on the great barrier reef (during a La Nina year, which is supposed to be cooler)

Scientists have predicted for decades, that climate breakdown will be incredibly fast when its starts in earnest, and at this point there will be little or nothing that we can do about it.

Have we crossed this terrifying point? We don’t know, but what we do know is that far from giving up saying it is too late and we just need to accept it, we need to accelerate our efforts to green our economy.

It is important to remember that the climate mitigation that was claimed to be too expensive, will be a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of living in a world that is subject to runaway climate change.

Despite what many right wing conservatives currently claim, if oil prices remain high we could be looking at a significant saving not a cost from these decarbonisation projects.

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The absurd case of a local mayor being imprisoned for trying to stop illegal deforestation, and how this happens all over the world

Often concessions that are granted to groups overlap with protected reserves. Obviously this should not be allowed, yet it continues. Often the company can then do great environmental damage before the error is rectified.

Ipilan Nickel Corporation began felling trees in its concession area in Brookes point Palawan, Mary Jean Feliciano moved to stop them. After sending cease and desist orders that were ignored (during which time 7000 trees were cut down) she used her authority to shut down the companies operations and demolish their onsite facilities. The company fought back, and the Philippine Ombudsman sided with the company and Feliciano was suspended for a year without pay.

By the time that the Department of Environment and Natural Resources issued a stoppage order 7000 trees in the village protected area, which operates as their water catchment area, had been cut down. This aea fell within the Mount Mantalingahan Protected Landscapes which is a recognized protected area.

The cutting started on May 2017. The village knew what was going on, but the mining company security guards would not let the village authorities in to stop the illegal deforestation.

What is more ridiculous is that the Companies environmental compliance cirtificate was rescinded on december 14th 2016, and on may 17, 2017 it was confirmed that the firm no longer had the permit to cut down any trees.

In July of 2017 hte Palawan Council for Sustainable Development reviewed a petition by Feliciano, recalled the clearance it had issued, and bowing to public pressure the council recongized that 80% of the mining companies claims fell within “core zones” of the protected forest – clearly illegal to cut down.

Civil rights groups praised Feliciano, but the Philippine Ombudsman found her “guilty of oppression or grave abuse of authority” and served her a year long suspension without pay. They claimed that while the EEC of the company had been revoked, they still had an appeal which needed to run its course before she undertook any action.

This suit brought by the company is a clear form of SLAPP litigation – the aim is to make everyone too fearful to try to get in their way.

Around the world companies are using legal actions to delay orders to stop damaging the environment. In many cases including deforestation, by the time an order comes through to stop cutting down forests, all the damage is done. There are places where companies will have to pay large reparations, as well as reforesting more land than they illegally deforested – this process must be rolled out worldwide.

It must become too expensive to risk damaging the environment. Another requirement is for these countries to put a system in place which stops companies delaying the answer why they carry out the work that environmental action is trying to halt.

How can we help? it is hard, but we must make our voices heard over the noise that comes from all around us.

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Deforestation in west Africa has doubled the frequency of life threatening storms

One of the main causes of these increased storms, is the fact that now the forest has been removed, there is a huge difference between the daytime temperature between the land and the sea.

This temperature gap is obviously causing winds, and so this is feeding storms.

Many lives have been lost over the last 20 year as a result of this. Unfortunately this coastal loss of forests is typical of where deforestation starts, however the climate impacts may hit us all over the next century.

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A jaguar refuge in Mexico is under threat from deforestation and expansion of tourist projects

It is essential that tourists do not damage the places that they visit! I would think that this is obvious, but this is something that often does not occur to the majority of people, to do a quick search and work out if their visit will damage the area.

Beautiful reserve in Northern Mexico, where Jaguars and other animals survive and thrive
Continue reading “A jaguar refuge in Mexico is under threat from deforestation and expansion of tourist projects”
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Iceland to end commercial whaling in 2024 as demand for the meat has disappeared

For most of us, whaling is distasteful. What has become clear is that whales are essentially swimming trees in terms of their positive impact on carbon emissions.

It is therefore quite frustrating that several nations continue to demand the ability to hunt whales.

Thankfully there is now so little demand for whale meet, that Iceland is going to end its hunt.

Continue reading “Iceland to end commercial whaling in 2024 as demand for the meat has disappeared”
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5 of the worlds biggest agribusinesses sought to weaken EU deforestation just 8 days after voting to accelerate action

Can this have possibly been the same people? Is there really anyone stupid enough to try to weaken EU forest protection 1 week after saying they would accelerate protection?

This sort of behaviour should be punished hard. Agriculture is responsible for about 25% of the worlds greenhouse emissions and so they must make progress if the world is to succeed in cutting emissions. The 5 firms in question include ADM Bunge Cargill LDC and Viterra.

They tried to explain away this discrepancy, but what is clear is that we must force these companies to be honest about how they are performing. Furthermore, we the consumers, must be willing to leave products behind if the manufacturer is behaving so badly.

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Forest elephants have been found to be more closely related to an extinct Asian elephant than to African Savannah elephants

The first analysis of the genome of the Straight-tusked elephant (a long extinct species) may well rewrite the elephant family tree – while at the current time there are 3 species of elephant (African forest, African bush and Asian Elephant) there are many more long extinct species.

It also suggests that the straight tusked elephant, long thought to be closely related to the Asian elephant, is actually an African elephant species. It does perhaps give another warning, to not classify animals by how they look but by their genes – convergent evolution can often mean species that look similar have little recent genetic links at all.

There has been much argument about whether the African forest is indeed a separate species. This debate must now be over. 2/3 of the African forest elephant has been lost in the last 15 years, we must stop arguing about its genes and get down to the work of saving this species.

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Chimpanzees in west Africa, appear to be the foundation of the current seemingly never ending rainforests

Just 2500 years ago, the never-ending forests of west Africa was made up of fragments of forest, with areas of open land between them. This fragmentation was down to a change in the environment occurring which meant that the dry season started to loosing far longer.

It seems that this changed because of seed disposal animals – including chimpanzees, which helped by leaving heavy seeds behind with a healthy dollop of fertilizer, allowing these slow growing trees to have a good start in life. Unfortunately, now as we are destroying the rainforest, there are also human hunters that are killing these seed dispersers in great numbers, making sure that the forests cannot regenerate.

Are we making sure that forests cannot recover? Not only are we destroying them, but also removing the natural gardeners that helped it return last time it was threatened. My fear is that it may become necessary for humans to replant vast areas by hand. Should it become necessary and recognized, then I am sure we would rise to the occasion, but far better to recognise it before it is too late.

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